Books for Future Women's History Months

Staff Blogger

C.A. Casey

History by the simplest definition is "events of the past." When trying to decide what is history, we have to define what is considered "past" enough to be history. The Historical Novel Society defines historical fiction to be set at least fifty years before the time of writing the book.

But what about nonfiction? Is a relatively recent event like 9/11 considered history? I remember it like it was yesterday, but does it feel like history for people in their twenties and thirties? I was eight when Kennedy was shot and it also feels like it was yesterday, even though it is history by any definition. On the other hand, when I was a kid, World War II felt like it had happened a hundred years before I was born instead of ending just a decade earlier.

This idea of history being relevant to the impact of particular events, and factors such as how old we are and where we live, makes the definition of it fluid.

Through the ages, women have had the added problem of being left off the pages of history. Because of this, we have to celebrate today's history-worthy women so they are not only remembered, but take their proper place in history without first being a footnote or buried completely until they're "discovered" some time in the future.

Here are three books where women not only lived history but contributed it, either by being a participant or a reporter of it.

Never heard of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp? For nineteen years, women camped outside an operational USAF nuclear base in Berkshire, England to protest the presence of nuclear weapons there.

Stephanie Davies was not only one of those women who lived in the camp, she was arrested and tried for being caught sneaking onto the base. Other Girls Like Me is not only her story, but a vivid inside look at what it was like living in a protest camp in tents without any modern amenities and with communal sharing of chores, keeping an eye on base activities, and protecting their camp.

Catherine Fitzpatrick was a fashion reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and one of the perks of the job was attending Fashion Week in New York City. On the morning of September 11, 2001 she was deciding which celebrity-filled parties to attend and which runway shows to cover that day.

Needless-to-say, her plans changed in a blink. She found herself running toward the World Trade Center for what she thought was a story about a building on fire and became a witness to the towers falling and the aftermath. Her account of that day in Recorder of Deeds is that of a reporter with a job to do while, at the same time, experiencing the same trauma and uncertainty of everyone around her.

Michelle A. Carter's book seems like ancient history, even though it took place from 1995 to 1996. Michelle, the managing editor of a suburban daily newspaper in the San Francisco Bay area, moved to Russia for a year as a United States Information Agency Journalist-in-Residence. There she traveled across the eleven time zones to work with newspaper editors who struggled to adapt to the new concepts of press freedom and a market economy.

From Under the Russian Snow depicts a Russia ready to embrace western democratic ideas before the rise of Putin. Capturing a brief, but optimistic time in Russian history.